Musk renews his ‘5 things’ demand with Trump’s apparent support
An emboldened Elon Musk is once again directing federal employees to justify their existence in writing — or face dismissal.
Musk made his renewed demand in a social media post Monday after President Donald Trump seemed to contradict other senior administration officials and approve the directive that the billionaire initially sent out to workers over the weekend.
“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” Musk wrote on X. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
The billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency on Saturday sent an email to federal agencies with the subject line “What did you do last week.” It sowed confusion and fear among workers, especially after Musk posted on X that failure to respond would be “taken as a resignation.”
Several agency heads, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, told their staff that they did not need to reply, and the Office of Personnel Management later clarified that responding to the email was “voluntary.”
As the head of DOGE, Musk has sought to drastically shrink the federal workforce, laying off thousands of workers and threatening to cut entire agencies. It is unclear what legal authority, if any, he has to sack federal employees who refuse to comply with his demand.
Trump praised Musk’s approach on Monday. “I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government,” he said.
He also defended some of his agency heads’ decisions to urge their staff to ignore the email for reasons of confidentiality. “They’re just saying there are some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week,” Trump said.
Musk’s email quickly ignited a firestorm of criticism among lawmakers and unions over the weekend.
“Elon Musk is traumatizing hardworking federal employees, their children and families,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday. “He has no legal authority to make his latest demands. We will block him in Congress and in the Courts. Again.”
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union which represents 800,000 federal workers, condemned Musk’s “chaotic and callous treatment of federal employees” and described the original directive as a “cynical attempt” to scare workers into quitting.
The latest version drew scorn from Brittany Holder, a spokesperson for AFGE.
“If we took the time to comment on each and every ridiculous thing that Elon Musk tweets out, we’d never get any work done,” Holder said. “Our stance will forever remain the same, AFGE will challenge any unlawful discipline, termination or retaliation against our members and federal employees across the country.”